1. Technological Field
The invention relates to an avionic aviation system with a ground station for automatic elimination of resultant failures in aircraft. The avionic aviation system is linked to a multiplicity of aircraft via a wireless avionics interface. By means of a switching device of the ground station of the aviation system, dedicated failure deployment devices are activated for automatic failure elimination if a failure detected by means of a sensor occurs in an aircraft.
2. Prior Art
In the last twenty years, the quantity of goods and people transported via aircraft has increased enormously worldwide. The dependencies of industry and the economy on air traffic are manifold. As in the case of any technical device, however, failures also occur again and again in aircraft. The causes of these vary and range from material wear, material fatigue, poor maintenance of the aircraft or of the landing strips, incorrect behavior by pilots and air traffic controllers to incorrect or inaccurate weather forecasts. However, even with careful training of the pilots, excellent maintenance of the aircraft and careful flight preparation, failures cannot be ruled out, something which is intrinsic in the complexity of the systems involved. The causes and backgrounds of air accidents and failures are not always easy to determine. The greatly increasing extent of air traffic in recent years additionally requires automation at all levels. However, automation without human interaction has not been possible to date in the prior art, particularly for eliminating failures. In spite of the large number of goods and people transported by aircraft, operational stoppages in the case of aircraft are not subject to the laws of large numbers. Firstly, the technical complexity in the design of the aircraft with generally a plurality of engines and a few thousand interacting sensors and operational units leads to behavior which cannot be predicted by the persons skilled in the art in extreme cases. Secondly, the physics, for example of the wings, and their dynamics and of the fuselage, is also by no means understood technically in such a way that the aircraft designed show flight behavior predictable for all cases. On the contrary, most of the design technology of the wings and of the aircraft body is still based on empirical values and not technically predicted forms. Aircraft themselves are moreover greatly dependent on weather in their behavior during operation. The weather itself is at present neither truly predictable nor calculatable for relatively long periods but is subject to chaotic, highly nonlinear processes which cannot be extrapolated for arbitrarily long periods. Efficient and stable automation of the elimination of failures thus eludes the avionic aviation systems known in the prior art. As mentioned, the sharp increase in air traffic in recent years has created a need for novel aviation systems which can efficiently eliminate and effectively absorb failures. Firstly, failures should be prevented; secondly, their occurrence should be detected in good time and eliminated, as far as possible before a catastrophe occurs. Efficient elimination of failures by means of an aviation system does of course also help to minimize the economic consequences for the operator, which gives him advantages, particularly in competition with other operators. In the elimination of the failure, a role is played not only by the type of devices used for eliminating failures (e.g. failure deployment devices, such as automatic extinguishing systems, locking and control mechanisms, alarm and signal devices, switching and activation devices or catastrophe deployment devices, etc) but also by the manner in which measured control parameters are filtered, processed and technically implemented for controlling the means deployed. Particularly in the case of real-time acquisition, analysis and management of the measured parameters of such systems, it is frequently the technical implementation which presents problems which can scarcely be overcome. The enormous quantity of data available today at any time from a very wide range of acquisition devices and detection devices (e.g. wind speed sensors, satellite images, water level sensors, water and wind temperature sensors, etc) makes monitoring and steering by purely human action and perception possible only with difficulty. The technical implementation of such aviation systems should, if possible, therefore interact in a fully automated manner and in real-time both with the acquisition devices and with the failure deployment devices. Even only partial human interactions are no longer possible in aviation technology in many cases in relation to quantity of signals and/or speed of reaction. In the case of complex systems, human interaction also has the disadvantage that its susceptibility to errors does not increase linearly as a function of the complexity. The behavior or the operation of the system becomes unpredictable. Unexpected operational stoppages or system crashes are the result. There have recently been many examples of this, such as, for example, system-generated operational stoppages in systems coupled with human interaction, for example, in spite of all emergency intervention devices and systems, unforeseeable aircraft crashes, such as, for example, the MD11 crash of Swissair before Halifax on Nov. 3, 1998, or the air accident at Überlingen in July 2002 etc.
Although failures in aircraft, both in passenger air transport and in cargo transport, have also become more frequent as a result of the increasing quantity transported, it is still true of aircraft failures that the prior art has far fewer empirical values than in the case of failures in other technical areas. This relates, for example, to the number of existing units in operation with comparable historical events. As a result of this, statistical empirical values, such as, for example, the “law of large numbers” substantially cannot be used for realizing an aviation system for eliminating failures. In addition, in many cases of failures in aircraft, it is difficult to determine the true cause in spite of complicated technical auxiliary devices, such as the black box and seamless monitoring of the aircraft trajectory. This makes it difficult to base automated deployment devices for eliminating failures or corresponding electronic switching and signal-generating systems on the necessary causality or to obtain any corresponding data at all. In the prior art, attempts have been made, for example, to base corresponding data on the affected landing strips, types of aircraft used or the quantity of aircraft operated (for example by means of market shares of the operator, such as, for example, turnover, etc). Known systems of this type are, for example, RPK (revenue passenger kilometer), AVF (average fleet value), etc. For example, the behavior of the operator can be taken into account thereby. One of the disadvantages of this system is that the turnover merely reflects the instantaneous and directly following future and only very indirectly permits the technical breakdown of the causes or failures. In addition, there is a direct dependence technically between the turnover and the resultant failures in the rarest cases. Some systems of the prior art are also based on the number of operational aircraft, the number of aircraft being taken as a boundary parameter for the type and for the technical possibilities for realizing an automated aviation system for eliminating failures. In certain circumstances, these systems better reflect the occurrence of failures. However, not all operators of aircraft need use the same technical equipment, technical know-how, maintenance of the machines, air bases, etc, to say nothing of using them identically for all aircraft operated. This greatly absorbs the dependency, with the result that the realization of such systems in turn acquires uncertainties and requires a large error tolerance. Other aviation systems of the prior art are based in their technical implementation on the so-called burning rate method. One of the problems of the burning rate method is based on the difficulty of extrapolating failures and their empirical values to future failures. This is due, inter alia to the complexity and nonlinearity of the external influences on the operation of the aircraft.
In the aviation systems of the prior art, human interaction is still a necessary precondition in many areas for differentiated signal generation. Particularly in the case of failures, the complexity of the devices involved, parameters acquired or processes to be controlled and interactions with the environment is exceeded to an extent which permits human interaction to a lesser and lesser extent. Particularly in the control, checking and monitoring of the dynamic and/or nonlinear processes which lead to failures, automation of detection eludes the prior art. Frequently, it is in particular the nonlinearity which makes automation impossible for conventional devices. Many technical implementations of different types of early warning devices or image and/or pattern recognition devices, particularly in the case of analogue measured data or in the case of the necessary self-organization of the device, have not yet been satisfactorily solved to date in the prior art. Most natural processes at least partly have a nonlinear course and tend to behave exponentially outside a narrow linear equilibrium area. For aircraft, efficient and reliably functioning early warning signal generation and automated failure elimination will therefore be important for survival. Efficient failure elimination comprises complex technical assemblies of the aircraft as well as the many thousand sensors and measured signals, or monitoring and control systems based on environmental influences which are difficult to monitor, such as meteorological (storms, hurricanes, floods, thermals) influences. Automation of failure elimination should be able to take account of all these influences without adversely affecting the reaction rate of failure elimination. Such systems have not been known to date in the prior art. The international patent WO 2004/045106 (EP1563616) describes a system of the prior art by means of which operational data of an aircraft can be collected and can be transmitted via communication means of the on-board system to a ground station. European patent EP 1 455 313 describes another system of the prior art, it being possible for flight and operation parameters to be monitored by a so-called aircraft condition analysis and management system (ACAMS) and for arising or expected failures to be detected. European patent EP 1 630 763 A1 describes a further monitoring and checking system. This system is intended to avoid arising failures based on the communicated measured parameters. The alarm device described is based in particular on forecast trajectories of the monitored aircraft which are generated by means of the system. In the case of imminent failures, an appropriate alarm signal is automatically generated. U.S. Pat. No. 6,940,426 describes a system for probability determination of resulting failures in aircraft. Here, different measured parameters of both historical events and dynamically detected events are acquired and taken into account accordingly in the signal generation. The European patent EP 1 777 674 describes a checking and control system for landings and takeoffs of aircraft. The measured parameters can be simultaneously acquired from a plurality of coordinated aircraft, managed and used for monitoring signal generation. European patent EP 1 840 755 A2 describes a further aviation system for avoiding and eliminating failures. A multiplicity of measured parameters of the aircraft are communicated to a ground station. This compares the measured data, for example, with manufacturer's data in real-time and, in the event of a difference, generates an appropriate control signal and/or control software for the avionics of the aircraft or of the operator. U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,797 describes a checking system which detects failures in the aircraft and stores measured parameters. The stored measured parameters can be used in the analysis of the failure. In particular, measured data are thus acquired for future failures and can be used for controlling failure deployment devices. Finally, European patent EP 1 527 432 B1 describes an avionic aviation system for stationary flight monitoring of aircraft. Based on the communicated data, for example, an appropriate alarm signal can be automatically produced and checking and control functions generated.